A well-written exploration of the mind-body connection.
A state-of-the-science survey of how our brains enable our bodies to do their work.
When we walk toward a wall, why don’t we smack into it? Because the body has an “intelligence” that enables us to do things like translate signals about distance, materiality, proprioception, and related matters that, writes Grafton (Chair, Neuroscience/Univ. of California, Santa Barbara), “are almost primordial in their simplicity” but that encompass the whole history of evolution, “stretching all the way back to the appearance of the most basic forms of locomotion in vertebrates.” The concept of “physical intelligence” is something that has tended to be studied only in its superlative sense, in the performance of top athletes or persons placed under the most extreme of environmental conditions. In everyday cases, the mental processes used for our actions “are, more than anything, different kinds of learning machines that the brain has available for acquiring and maintaining physically derived knowledge.” A climber and distance hiker, Grafton takes many of his examples from his own experiences outdoors under conditions that sometimes invite taking things for granted but that instead require constant vigilance, the mind connecting sensory information to appropriate responses—appropriate because, so often, doing the wrong thing can lead to disaster. All of this requires sophisticated neural circuitry that in turn yields a kind of “sixth sense” whose discovery has fueled debate among philosophers and brain scientists for decades: “How could a person consciously and willfully move while being utterly unaware of her own body’s movements?” Arriving at an answer deepens our understanding of this sixth sense of movement, which turns out to be more important than the other senses in getting us around in the world. It involves such complex mental processes as being able to “conceptualize dynamic force” and areas of the brain that range from the higher-reasoning cortex to the elemental cerebellum, which "keeps track of a massive list of comparatively minor adjustments or tweaks to each movement to make them work well under a variety of conditions.”
A well-written exploration of the mind-body connection.Pub Date: Jan. 7, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-5247-4732-9
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Pantheon
Review Posted Online: Sept. 28, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2019
Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our...
A psychologist and Nobel Prize winner summarizes and synthesizes the recent decades of research on intuition and systematic thinking.
The author of several scholarly texts, Kahneman (Emeritus Psychology and Public Affairs/Princeton Univ.) now offers general readers not just the findings of psychological research but also a better understanding of how research questions arise and how scholars systematically frame and answer them. He begins with the distinction between System 1 and System 2 mental operations, the former referring to quick, automatic thought, the latter to more effortful, overt thinking. We rely heavily, writes, on System 1, resorting to the higher-energy System 2 only when we need or want to. Kahneman continually refers to System 2 as “lazy”: We don’t want to think rigorously about something. The author then explores the nuances of our two-system minds, showing how they perform in various situations. Psychological experiments have repeatedly revealed that our intuitions are generally wrong, that our assessments are based on biases and that our System 1 hates doubt and despises ambiguity. Kahneman largely avoids jargon; when he does use some (“heuristics,” for example), he argues that such terms really ought to join our everyday vocabulary. He reviews many fundamental concepts in psychology and statistics (regression to the mean, the narrative fallacy, the optimistic bias), showing how they relate to his overall concerns about how we think and why we make the decisions that we do. Some of the later chapters (dealing with risk-taking and statistics and probabilities) are denser than others (some readers may resent such demands on System 2!), but the passages that deal with the economic and political implications of the research are gripping.
Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our minds.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-374-27563-1
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Sept. 3, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
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The Stoics did much better with the much shorter Enchiridion.
A follow-on to the author’s garbled but popular 48 Laws of Power, promising that readers will learn how to win friends and influence people, to say nothing of outfoxing all those “toxic types” out in the world.
Greene (Mastery, 2012, etc.) begins with a big sell, averring that his book “is designed to immerse you in all aspects of human behavior and illuminate its root causes.” To gauge by this fat compendium, human behavior is mostly rotten, a presumption that fits with the author’s neo-Machiavellian program of self-validation and eventual strategic supremacy. The author works to formula: First, state a “law,” such as “confront your dark side” or “know your limits,” the latter of which seems pale compared to the Delphic oracle’s “nothing in excess.” Next, elaborate on that law with what might seem to be as plain as day: “Losing contact with reality, we make irrational decisions. That is why our success often does not last.” One imagines there might be other reasons for the evanescence of glory, but there you go. Finally, spin out a long tutelary yarn, seemingly the longer the better, to shore up the truism—in this case, the cometary rise and fall of one-time Disney CEO Michael Eisner, with the warning, “his fate could easily be yours, albeit most likely on a smaller scale,” which ranks right up there with the fortuneteller’s “I sense that someone you know has died" in orders of probability. It’s enough to inspire a new law: Beware of those who spend too much time telling you what you already know, even when it’s dressed up in fresh-sounding terms. “Continually mix the visceral with the analytic” is the language of a consultant’s report, more important-sounding than “go with your gut but use your head, too.”
The Stoics did much better with the much shorter Enchiridion.Pub Date: Oct. 23, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-525-42814-5
Page Count: 580
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: July 30, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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